Human Rights Track

Human Rights track approved

Interim President of the City College of New York and Dean of the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership confers awards upon the recipients of the 2015 Human Rights Poster Competition, an initiative that led to the MA in the Study of the Americas: Human Rights track.

MISSION

The mission of the Human Rights track, which we hope to launch in 2018-19, is to provide MA students in the Study of the Americas with a deep, critical, and interdisciplinary understanding of human rights issues. The track offers graduate course options that approach the field of human rights and practice from multiple disciplinary and thematic perspectives within the regionally diverse geography of the Americas, thus enabling comparative and international perspectives. Thanks to the expertise of our faculty as well as the programs developed at the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies (our Frances S. Patai Program in Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights; The Americas Film Festival of New York, whose focus is cinema that deals with human rights; the M.A. in the Study of Human Rights’ first conference on Human Rights in 2010; our lecture series course on Human Rights in 2014; our Human Rights Club for both BA and MA students developed in 2015; our pro-seminar in Human Rights in 2016; as well as our close relationships to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and the Cervantes Institute, our program is already de facto offering a focus in Human Rights.

In addition, as per our general degree objectives, students will be able to conduct and apply original research, use technological tools appropriately, and communicate with varied audiences effectively. In particular, by giving students an appreciation of grave human rights violations as well as recent normative and institutional developments within and across borders, this track contributes to advancing the mission of the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies: to encourage global citizenship.